Monday, July 29, 2013

On Monday 23rdPresident Maduro announced
that National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello would, within hours, reveal
the proofs of plans by the opposition to assassinate him.

Today Cabello declared that those proofs will
finally be provided “in the coming days.” They will include “names of persons
that live outside Venezuela, implicated in the plans… with itineraries.”

He gave no further details but did mention as
“notable evidence” that representatives of the opposition have met people close
to Augusto Pinochet, Alvaro Uribe, and ex-President of Peru, Alan García, and
that opposition party Primero Justicia “is always present where there is
violence.”

Friday, July 26, 2013

This last week was the “magnicidio” week,
with almost daily claims by government officials that the opposition is plotting
to kill either President Maduro, or National Assembly President Diosdado
Cabello.

On the 23rdMaduro and Cabello jointly insisted on the magnicidio claims: “If
they were to do something to me, the wrath of the gods and of the people would
be uncontainable, they would be banned for 10 centuries and the Revolution
would acquire a new character,” declared Maduro. Cabello also stated that “if
they dare to do something, they are going to have a hard time.”

Cabello repeated that the “source” of his
information is José Vicente Rangel and La Colmena: “he [JVR] made a very serious
denunciation, that a CIA group, from Chile and in contact with the
pinochetistas, are planning to kill Maduro, or if they fail, kill me.”

That same day, on a separate event, Maduro announced that Diosdado Cabello would be showing, “within hours”, the proofs of
the ongoing assassination plot: “I have designated Diosdado Cabello, as head of
the PSUV, to reveal all the truths of how attempts to assassinate me have been
planned for month.”

Those proofs have not yet surfaced. The 24th however Diosdado
Cabello , on his address commemorating the 446 anniversary of the
foundation of Caracas, again alerted of the existence of
the conspiracy and the consequences if it were to succeed: “If something were to happen to Maduro, the people would be
ruthless with you [the opposition].”This time Cabello argued that the conspiracy is based,
not in Chile as previously mentioned, but in Miami: “This right wing people, together
with some other people in Miami, are preparing an attempt against the life of
the compañero Nicolás Maduro, and this is very serious.”

I am still surprised that local commentators and media seem to not have taken the time to actually read the famous La Colmena blog by Pedro Grima Gallardo, the only “source” of the plot publically revealed so far.
As I argued in a previous post, La Colmena is really an eclectic re-blog of
almost every conspiracy theory circulating on internet. The last articles
include claims that the US government is hiding contacts with extraterrestrials, and a denunciation that the US Federal Reserve is really a
private bank owned by Jews plotting to take over the world.

Monday, July 22, 2013

José Vicente Rangel should be more careful
with his sources, or he could end up quoting directly from the Protocol of the
Elders of Zion next time.

Yesterday in his weekly TV program, José
Vicente Rangel insisted on his usual conspiracy claims and added details of the
plots: “the criminal agents of the CIA operating from Chile, Washington Moreira
(DEA credentials), and Todd Porter (FBI agent), are in charge of managing the trespass
of clandestine funds to finance the assassinations of Nicolas Maduro and
Diosdado Cabello.” These agents would only be in charge of managing the funds
which would be obtained from drug trafficking sources.

The conspiracy, according to JVR, would have two
scenarios: The first one would be the assassination of Maduro, which would
trigger a power vacuum filled by a military intervention with the support of
the CIA and the Venezuelan opposition.

If the attempt on Maduro’s life were to
fail, the second scenario would be the assassination of National Assembly
President Diosdado Cabello, with the purpose of blaming Maduro and Iran’s intelligence
services.

JVR gave more details of the very
elaborate plot which also includes his previous claims of war planes purchased
by the opposition and the use of Colombian military bases by the conspirators.

But the most interesting thing to come out
yesterday was that, for the first time, JVR spoke openly of the main source for
his conspiracy theorizing: he has in fact been quoting extensively from the
blog La Colmena, written by Dr Pedro Grima Gallardo, a Physics Professor at the
Universidad de los Andes in Mérida.

The blog La Colmena has several other
interesting articles written by Grima Gallardo. Here are two examples of his
most recent pieces:

In this article Grima Gallardo subscribes to
the theories that the September 11 events in New York could really be an
elaborate scam by insurance companies owned by “Zionists”. He re-blogs and
article by Kevin Barret on the issue.

In this second article, Grima Gallardo explains
that the US Federal Reserve is in truth a private bank controlled by a “Consortium
of Jewish bankers.” He further explains revelations by a converted Jew,
Nathanael Kapner, which would indicate that: “the United States, led by its powerful
Jewish masters, are driving the world to an economic debacle, with the final
objective of establishing a world government which would include a single
currency, a single economic policy, demolition of commercial frontiers, an end
of protectionism (which is today considered the eight capital sin, and even the
inoperative and clumsy Bachelete had words against protectionism, when she
certainly doesn’t know what she is talking about), and the imposition of global
norms that would make absolutely illusory any national sovereignty.”

Sunday, July 21, 2013

The new Defense Minister Carmen Meléndez
declared this morning in an interview in Televén that “these last years have been years of conspiracy after conspiracy, and not
only inside the Armed Forces, but also related to shortages, speculation,
medicines, electricity, and all types of conspiracies to destabilize the country,
and they are still threatening us, but we have a government that is paying
attention to everything.”

She also warned the conspirators: “we, as
Armed Forces, are watching everything that happens in the country and we are
ready to take actions if we notice any type disturbance, we are attentive to
any fire (candelita) that might light
up and we will do all we can to put it out. We will be on the alert.”

Interior, Peace, and Justice Minister Miguel Rodriguez Torres declared in a TV interview the following: “people like that
Rocío San Miguel, who I was listening to the other day, talking about human
rights and the Armed Forces. About her I can tell you that she is a CIA
operator in Venezuela, and I can prove it.”

Rocío San Miguel is a lawyer and human rights
activist, and often writes in local media about Armed Forces related issues.
She has been critical of the government anti-crime Plan Patria Segura because of its use of military personnel in
citizen’s security.

San Miguel directly responded to the
accusations via twitter (@rociosanmiguel): “A message to @RodriguezT_MIJP regarding
his accusation that I am a CIA operator: defenders of human rights know what to
expect from characters like you.”

In a speech delivered during a military ceremony yesterday, Nicolás Maduro publically called Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy “very corrupt.” He also
accused him of being “the political patron and financial arm of the Venezuelan
fascist right.”

The Spanish daily El País today reminds its readers that “the government of Caracas
has been denouncing, through its media network of information and propaganda,
that the businessman from Galicia, Manuel Jove Capellán – identified by
Venezuelan state media as “the great financial backer of the Partido Popular – and the company Veta,
constitute a source of funding for destabilizing actions against the
[Venezuelan] regime.”

During the same ceremony Maduro accused
opposition leader Henrique Capriles of traveling to Chile in order to meet pinochetistas and seek support for a
military coup in Venezuela. Maduro also announced that the he is terminating the Venezuela-United States approach as a response to the recent declarations by
Samantha Powers.

El
País ends its note with this assessment: “Official
media in Venezuela has immediately given wide circulation to the threats by
Maduro, which would indicate that they represent a deliberate turn in foreign
policy and not a momentary outburst by President.”

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Nicolas Maduro commented yesterday a trip
by opposition leader Henrique Capriles to Chile. According to the president,
Capriles motive for the trip is a meeting with “pinochetistas” in search for
models of privatization experiences, especially in the area of education.

Caracas, 19 Jul.
AVN.- The search and subsequent replica of privatization models of education
and services is one of the objectives of the Venezuelan right with his tour of
the region to discredit the Venezuelan institutions, warned Friday President
Nicolas Maduro, regarding the visit to Chile made by the loser of the last two
presidential elections, Henrique Capriles.

In a meeting with
hundreds of students from 4,000 schools across the country, at Fuerte Tiuna
military fort, in Caracas, the president spoke about the importance of
maintaining a free and inclusive education in the country, which is not the
Chile's case, where the payment of high tuition costs restricts access to
education, causing massive protests over the years.

"They want to
impose on Venezuela the private education existing in Chile. That's what they
are going to search in Chile: privatization models that the people massively
repudiate on the streets," he said.

During the event,
Maduro recalled the high school student movements of the decades of the 60s,
70s and 80s, which took to the streets to protest for the right to study.

"Thanks to the
powerful high school student movements of the 70s and 80s massive privatization
of education could be stopped in Venezuela."

This cost deaths
arising from repression to which hundreds of young people across the country
were subjected, he criticized.

Furthermore, Maduro
also recalled the times he was subjected by the security forces of the
Venezuelan state.

He told that the
police officers of the 80s were equipped with some instruments called electric
curlers which "when touching people, it delivers shocks of volts and let
people on the floor," he said.

He then asked
students if they knew what a peinilla –a blunt sword, long and flat, used by
police in riot control– or a rolo was, which were instruments used to suppress
protests.

Given the silence
of all, the President was pleased to be part of a government that has seen a
youth growing up without repression and enjoying free education.

AVN 19/07/2013
17:34

It is curious that Maduro did not ascribe
other conspiracy motives to Caprile´s trip to Chile, such as searching for foreign
support for an “ongoing coup”. The reason for this could be the context of the
declarations, which were delivered in a meeting with students. In this case
Maduro choses the plot theory that is most likely to interest his audience.

It is also worth noting the use of the term
“the right” when making reference to the opposition. As I commented in previous
posts, government officials and state media constantly use “the right” and “fascists”
when referring to the opposition. This is a practice that has now become common
and prevalent and it does not seem to alarm most readers. But as I have argued before, it is a polarizing practice that dehumanizes political adversaries and
precludes political dialogue.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Here is a book that will make even Eva
Golinger look like a CIA agent; literally, since Captain E. S. Geary claims
that Chávez himself was a puppet of the US government. He was installed in
power by the CIA, with the assistance of the US Coast Guard!

I haven´t read The Venezuela Conspiracy (2007). Until I can get my hands on it,
here is some info taken from its web page:

“The CIA believes that to insure the
unimpeded flow of Venezuelan oil to the United States it is necessary to
install a puppet government in the Miraflores Palace in Caracas. They determine
that this new government should be lead by a charismatic socialist
revolutionary and former paratroop commander who the Agency believes will
follow Washington’s agenda.

The Central Intelligence Agency with
assistance of the US Coast Guard embarked on a clandestine mission to
destabilize the elected government and install Hugo Chávez as president of
Venezuela

After assuming control of the government
Chávez double-crosses the CIA and begins to actively support the anti-American
policies of Fidel Castro, Muammar al-Qaddafi and the late Saddam Hussein. Hugo
Rafael Chávez Frias remains today the President of the Bolivarian Republic of
Venezuela.”

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Some hours ago via twitter President Nicolas
Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) urged his followers to “read and reproduce” an article by José Vicente Rangel published in Últimas Nocicias.

In his article JVR repeats many of the claims
he has made many times before and that I have posted here. He compares the opposition
strategy with “the fascist coup of Antonio Tejero in Spain,” the coup against
Allende in Chile, and the recent coup in Egypt. (However his claims of 18 war planes
purchased by the opposition and stationed in Colombia have been dropped from
his most recent articles and declarations.)

He also repeats his argument of an “ongoing electoral
coup”. According to him, this is exactly what the Venezuelan opposition
attempted when it failed to recognize Maduro as the winner of the April 14
elections. In JVR’s narrative of the events following that day, Capriles sent
his followers a “subversive message” which “unleashed violence.” Maduro was
able however, a few hours later, to “abort the developing coup.” But, JVR
warns: this is all part of an “ongoing coup”, and the scheme used by the
opposition in April will be repeated during the Municipal elections scheduled
for December this year.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Yesterday Nicolás Maduro wrote several tweets
alerting of an ongoing “discrediting campaign carried on by fascist groups against
the memory of the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, Hugo Chávez.” (according to a note by AVN)

Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) wrote this sequence
of tweets during the afternoon:

“People on the alert! The fascists have now
begun a campaign against the memory of our supreme comandante in order to destroy him.”

“They want to destroy the noble sentiments
and the loving memory of Hugo Chávez held by the fatherland. I call on all
patriots to defend his dignity.”

“We have to defend Chávez’s dignity. They
could not destroy him during his life time and we will not allow them to debase his memory now. Let´s defend his legacy.”

“Hugo Chávez is the Supreme Comandante of a revolution and he will
continue the road of independence towards a new fatherland. He is the
undefeated comandante of Venezuela.”

The President of the National Assembly,
Diosdado Cabello, also seconded the President on twitter (@dcabellor):

Medina argues that there is information that "Maduro’s mother and two sisters were born in Colombia and that they resided in
Cúcuta. In the civil registry of San Antonio de Padua in Cúcuta, they said they
could not find the birth registry of Maduro because it had been destroyed by a
fire.”

Medina qualified the situation as “a
bi-national fraud. There is complicity among the powers. There is a lot of mystery
about the origins of Maduro.”

But further into the interview Medina also
doubted the date of Chávez’s death as has been presented by the government, and
went so far as to claim that his remains are not in the mausoleum of the Cuartel de la Montaña: “inside the sarcophagus
there is only a wax figure of Chávez.”

Chávez, according to Medina, was really
buried in his home state of Barinas.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

If by chance you are accused of being part of
a conspiracy, you may find that the most exasperating consequence is that the
more you try to deny your involvement, the guiltier you will seem in the eyes
of the conspiracy theorist.

This is a feature that makes conspiracy theories
very hard to debunk: denying or not believing in them makes you a dupe in the
best of cases, an accomplice or conspirator at worst.

Today José Vicente Rangel gives us an excellent
example of this form of reasoning. Some hours ago in his TV show José Vicente Hoy, he explained that “the
right is persistently engaged in conspiratorial actions, and they intent to
repeat the coup format of April 2002.”

But JVR also argued that the biggest challenge
facing Maduro’s government is “to dismount the enemy’s tactic which consists in
denying that they conspire, when in truth they are up to their noses [hasta la coronilla] in a new adventure.”

For JVR it is useless for “the right” to deny
the conspiracy since there are “too many signs, too many unusual revelations,
even indiscretions, that confirm the evil purposes [despropósitos] and the anti-patriotic actions that some are
advancing outside the country in order to secure the solidarity of the imperial
power.”

Friday, July 12, 2013

As I commented yesterday, it’s just a matter
of time before someone in aporrea.org claims that Snowden is still a US agent.

TodayOscar Heck presents an interesting argument: since espionage by the NSA is not a secret, and most
countries know all about it, it’s hard to understand why so many are making such a
big deal of the Snowden case.

The answer?

“Snowden, and even the political-diplomatic
reaction of the affected countries, is a show, it has to be,” thinks Heck

The purpose for this show would be “among
other things, a military exercise, I mean, an exercise in war propaganda
designed to measure the military capacity of media reaction by Venezuela,
Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba, and any other country willing to give
Snowden asylum, any country ‘enemy’ of the USA.”

It’s not exactly clear from the article how media
reaction allows the US government to “measure” the military capability of those
countries. But Heck adds another hypothesis: perhaps
the “media strategic military show” serves a different purpose. He did a quick
Google search and found out that the US is currently testing a new aircraft
carrier for drones. The whole Snowden affair could be a cover operation for
this military test.

Heck finishes his article with a quote from
Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: “All wars are based on deception.”

Thursday, July 11, 2013

In a previous post I commented that no high
ranking opposition figure had yet echoed the theory that Maduro was not born in
Venezuela.

Today however, MUD
secretary Ramón Guillermo Aveledo declared in a Televen interview that “in the
country there are many Venezuelans of foreign origin, in fact many are of
Colombian origin.” He added that he was puzzled by the fact “that Maduro has
never been willing to clearly say the truth and has been hiding the truth,
which is something very consistent with his conduct of always saying lies. I
think this is a relevant fact, that there is no motive to be ashamed of… no motive for hiding
your foreign origin.”

The popular pro-government web page
aporrea.org publishes today an article by Oswaldo Leal that argues that Snowden
is really a trap for Venezuela’s government.

According to Leal, Snowden’s presence in
Venezuela would be used by the US government as a casus belli for the invasion
of the country. The invasion would be carried out from Colombia where “everything
is ready, even the war planes bought by the oil industry people, the seven military
bases, Uribe and his para-militaries, drug traffickers and their networks. Let´s
not fool ourselves, whenever they like, they can take us off the map, they have
everything…”

The article does not clarify if Snowden is a willing part of the plot or only a
CIA dupe.

Aporrea is not part of the official media
system SiBCI, and its columnists are not government officials. However it is a
good source for theories held by government supporters that go beyond the official
line.

The theory that Snowden is really part of an
elaborate plot by the CIA against Venezuela has appeared before in
aporrea. I think it’s probable that someone in the page will soon argue that Snowden
is still a CIA agent, and that the whole asylum deal is really a ruse form the
CIA to plant an agent inside Venezuela.

Monday, July 8, 2013

José Vicente Rangel announced yesterday
that five of the eighteen war planes he claims were bought by the opposition in
the United States have already been delivered to a Colombian military base.
Complicit in the plot are, according to JVR, an oil company based in Canada called
Pacific Rubiales, the ex-PDVSA executives organization Gente del Petróleo, and
also CIA, FBI, and DEA agents.

He also warned that “the conspiracy
against Venezuela orchestrated from Colombia by the international and national
right is increasing every day. (…) The ultra-right of Colombia, the Uribistas,
the powerful economic groups, retired generals, media, oil company Pacific Rubiales, and the intense
activities of a sector of the Venezuelan opposition that moves with complete
freedom in Colombia, have turned that country into an operation base against
Venezuela.”

Elaborate plots have been routinely denounced
by JVR in his TV program for more than a decade. He was behind many of the
warnings of supposed attempts to kill President Chávez and, in his claims of an
ongoing permanent conspiracy against the Venezuelan government, coined several memorable
oxymora around the word coup, such as “electoral coup” and “continuous coup.”

Yesterday’s presentation by JVR included
almost every event of the last months and every actor of the Venezuelan
opposition in the ongoing plot: “an insistent campaign inside the Armed Forces,
the exasperation of social conflicts, the political (politiquero) handling of university problems, speculation and
hoarding of basic products of Venezuelan’s diet, and the excessive re-heating
of street conflicts. Not a day goes by without an increase in the coup script
and in the coverage of the conspirators.”

Also notable was his
warning of the opposition’s “insistence on denying that there is an ongoing
plot against the legitimate government of Nicolas Maduro.” For JVR precisely this
denial constitutes proof of the conspiracy.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Eduardo Samán, President of Idepabis (the
governmental consumer’s protection office in charge of controlling prices),
declared yesterday that the recent shortages of toilet paper in Venezuela were
part of destabilizing plot against the country: “The ultra-right forged a coup
plan in which the United States company Kimberly Clark was involved.”

According to Samán, Kimberly Clark had claimed
lack of dollars was the reason for its failing production of toilet paper.

Analysts argue that a combination of factors, including distortions produced by the fixed
Bolivar/Dollar exchange rate, decreasing production due to expropriations, and an
overall anti-business environment, among others, are the real causes of recurrent
shortages in Venezuela.

Notice that, for Samán and other government officials
that have been quoted in this blog, there is a lack of agency in these economic
explanations that they seem to find unconvincing. For Samán the economic
policies of the government are not the problem: price controls, expropriations,
and state ownership of the means of production, are just what a society in
transition to socialism is supposed to be doing. If things go wrong, the root of
the problem must be elsewhere. There must be evil agents, “wreckers and saboteurs,”
that are hoarding products, sabotaging production, wrecking the energy grid,
corrupting governmental agencies in charge of controls, etc.

Conspiracy theories are theodicies that rely
on strict forms of social agency and direct causality: evil just doesn’t happen,
or is the product of impersonal social or natural causes, or is the result of
unintended consequences of actions. Instead evil is produced by a concrete somebody who is a powerful agent and can
be singled out as the enemy.

Compare this with the assessment made by Charles
Taylor of the pre-French Revolution way of framing economic problems in his book Modern Social
Imaginaries (Duke, 2004, p.130):

“Two things seem crucial to this
mentality. First, it leaves very little place for impersonal mechanisms. It had
no place for the new conception of the economy, where shortage and glut are
explained by certain state of the market, which in turn can be affected by
events in distant lands. If prices rise, it´s because the engrosser is hiding
stocks to exact a higher tribute from us. Of course, people knew that harvests
could be good or bad, and that in this sense, shortages were also natural
phenomena. But they thought that within certain limits, the powers in charge
were able to bring the necessary supplies from elsewhere to avoid at least the
most dramatic hikes. This was another sign, if one likes, that theirs was a
mentality of subjects, who tended to attribute to their rulers powers that they
don’t in fact have. This is also a mentality at the antipodes of capitalism,
because it has no place for an economy ordered by impersonal laws, central to a
new political economy; besides, it tends to demand an interventionist remedy
for every evil.

This belief in the power of direct
intervention reflects the second important facet of this mind-set: if things go
wrong, it´s always someone’s fault. One can identify the evildoer and act
against him. What’s more, because the responsible agent is always an evildoer –
not the unconscious and unwilling cause of some misfortune, but a malevolent,
even criminal agent – action against him means not just neutralizing his
actions, but also punishing him. An elementary sense of justice demands this.
But there was something more: retribution often has the sense not only of
punishing a wrong, but of purging a noxious element.”

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Yesterday,
during the events celebrating the anniversary of Venezuela’s declaration of independence
from Spain, Maduro announced he would offer Snowden humanitarian asylum
to protect him “form the persecution unleashed by the most powerful empire of
the world against a young man that has only told the truth.” No word yet form
Snowden if he will accept (Nicaragua has also issued an offer to process his
asylum request.)

There is certain
irony in Maduro praising Snowden’s actions. The Venezuelan security services routinely
records phone conversations of political opponents. Sometimes these recordings
make star appearances in public state TV programs. Indeed now disgraced Venezolana de Televisión (VTV) presenter
Mario Silva owed much of his fame to his use of these recordings in his show La Hojilla, until he became a victim of
his own methods.

Of course phone
tapping does not amount to a full “surveillance program”. And the Venezuelan
security services are far from the technological capabilities necessary for
internet surveillance.

Or are they?

Back in January
the New York Times carried an article on a report by the Citizen Lab of the
Munk School of Global Affairs of the University of Toronto. The report claimed that technology for internet
surveillance made by Blue Coat Systems, California, was being used for
censoring purposes by a long list of countries, mentioned last among them was
Venezuela.

However in the actual report from Citizen Lab, Venezuela was only mentioned in a final paragraph. The
report stated that: “We identified a single installation of PacketShaper on a
netblock belonging to CANTV Servicios, one of the country’s largest
telecommunications providers and a state-owned enterprise. This was identified
by Shodan in August 2012 and was verified during testing. There is no current
evidence of filtering of political or social sites in Venezuela. However,
Reporters Without Borders has expressed concern that the lack of extensive
Internet censorship in the country ignores other methods of controlling
Venezuelan cyberspace, such as the monitoring of Internet forums and websites
for politically sensitive content.”

In short, the
report claimed that Venezuela has the
technology but had not yet actually used it for censoring, much less fur surveillance.
It does however quote and repeat the concerns form Reporters Without Frontiers
and Freedom House that the Venezuelan government is using other methods to
control opinions in cyberspace.

I can´t wait for conspiracy theorist out there
to come up with explanations so I can write about them. I’ll just go ahead an
offer one: Since Venezuelan security services are still building a proper internet
surveillance program, why not hire a former CIA agent that seems to have a lot
of firsthand knowledge on how these things are actually done?

Friday, July 5, 2013

Yesterday, before the extraordinary
meeting of UNASUR to express solidarity with Evo Morales, Maduro declared that
the Venezuelan “right” is plotting to stage against him a coup similar to the
one in Egypt against Mohamed Mursi:

“Now they are saying that, just like in
Egypt, they deposed President Mursi, they derogated the Constitutions, and
outside of the Constitution they named a government. Well now the opposition
says they will do the same thing in Venezuela, now they say they will come and
depose the government of Venezuela”

Thursday, July 4, 2013

This theory claims that Maduro was born not in Venezuela but in Colombia, and therefore does
not constitutionally qualify for the post of President of Venezuela.

The theory has been running around in social media for a while, but it was only recently that opposition politicians
have started to endorse it. The most strident seems to be National Assembly
representative from COPEI, Abelardo Diaz, who yesterday claimed that Maduro’s
parents are Colombian and that the President was born in the frontier city of
Cúcuta.

But the most interesting piece was
published last week by the Correo del Orinoco and republished in English in the
pro-government blog venezuelanalysis. Until now, the issue has received little
attention by local media (there have been opinion pieces about this in El
Universal), however the article from Correo del Orinoco correctly informs that Spanish
paper El País and Miami´s El Nuevo Herald have mentioned it. For both
newspapers the source of the claim was Panama diplomat Guillermo Cochez.

Pay attention to the way Correo del
Orinoco frames the news:

“As part of ongoing attempts to prevent
President Nicolas Maduro from consolidating his leadership in the Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela, right-wing forces at home and abroad have reissued false
claims that he was born in neighboring Colombia.”

It later adds:

“As part of the anti-Maduro campaign
described by Minister Villegas, private media outlets tied to the Venezuelan
opposition issued their own interpretations of Cochez’s claim. In an article
titled “What if Maduro is Colombian?”, Venezuelan daily El Universal published
a piece by rightwing blogger Alexander Cambero in which he warns that “if
Nicolas Maduro is proven to have been born in the Colombian city of Cucuta, in
the state of North Santander, we will be facing the greatest fraud ever
committed against the good will of the Venezuelan people.”

The claims that Maduro was born in
Colombia would therefore be part of a campaign by “right-wing forces at home
and abroad.” It seems that the best way to counter a conspiracy theory, is with yet
another conspiracy theory.